An Editor/Assembler EA #3 file is a DIS/FIX 80 file. Sometimes, these files are autostart, while other times, they will require a program name to launch. I think "START" has been a common name, but not always.

An Editor/Assembler EA #5 file is a PROGRAM image file. Typically, if you see filenames like UTIL1, UTIL2 on a disk, that is an indication they are to be run from EA#5 option. They do not require a program name to run. Also, if there are multiple files with an incremental character in the last place of the filename and are 32 (or 33) sectors in length depending upon your disk manager, that is also indicative they are an EA#5 program.

It should also be known that both Basic and Extended Basic programs also use a filetype of PROGRAM. These programs will not be loadable under the Editor/Assembler module.

There is a program called IDENTIFILE that can do a directory of your files on your disk and give you a fair amount of information on how/where to use the individual file(s).

In particular, the #3 files are designed to be loadable in any memory. So you pay for that flexibility with a larger file size and a slower load time.

#5 files are 100% compiled and static; you can't place them anywhere in memory except where they were compiled to be. They start with a small header that indicates where in memory the code begins.

To make maximum use of the RAM memory of the TI and load your program the most efficiently, option #5 files are the best.

SAMS loading is a more complex subject. Art Green's SAMS assembler/linker had the option to create relocatable code that could be loaded into any page of memory, but it was pretty complex to understand and I do most of my compiling work on the PC for speed rather than the TI.

I ended up writing my own loader for my CRPG, and compiling static binaries that get stored in one large binary file which is loaded and set in fixed pages. To load around 160k takes a little over a minute, so it's pretty fast all things considered.